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Sunday November 3, 2013 9:14 AM

A gem merchant who says he tipped the FBI to the location of Osama bin Laden’s secret compound in Pakistan eight years before his killing has hired a Chicago law firm to help him get the $25 million reward offered for the terrorist’s capture.

Tom Lee, 63, of Grand Rapids, Mich., “accurately reported” to an FBI special agent in 2003 that bin Laden was hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, according to a letter sent in August to FBI Director James Comey by an attorney for the Loevy & Loevy firm.

Lee’s account, however, differs from numerous published reports that the bin Laden compound wasn’t even completed until 2005.

Lee, a U.S. citizen of Egyptian descent, said he learned of the complex’s location from a Pakistani intelligence agent who told him he had escorted bin Laden and his family from Peshawar to Abbottabad.

Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 during a raid by U.S. special operations forces on the heavily fortified compound in Abbottabad, about 70 miles north of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.